International Patent Application No. PCT/AU2005/000580 published under WO 2005/103926 (to which U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/111,946 and published under No. 2005-0262313 corresponds) in the name of the present applicant, discloses how different portions of an application program written to execute on only a single computer can be operated substantially simultaneously on a corresponding different one of a plurality of computers. That simultaneous operation has not been commercially used as of the priority date of the present application. International Patent Application Nos. PCT/AU2005/001641 (WO2006/110,937) to which U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/259,885 entitled: “Computer Architecture Method of Operation for Multi-Computer Distributed Processing and Co-ordinated Memory and Asset Handling” corresponds and PCT/AU2006/000532 (WO2007/110,957) both in the name of the present applicant and both unpublished as at the priority date of the present application, also disclose further details. The contents of the specification of each of the abovementioned prior application(s) are hereby incorporated into the present specification by cross reference for all purposes.
Briefly stated, the abovementioned patent specifications disclose that at least one application program written to be operated on only a single computer can be simultaneously operated on a number of computers each with independent local memory. The memory locations required for the operation of that program are replicated in the independent local memory of each computer. On each occasion on which the application program writes new data to any replicated memory location, that new data is transmitted and stored at each corresponding memory location of each computer. Thus apart from the possibility of transmission delays, each computer has a local memory the contents of which are substantially identical to the local memory of each other computer and are updated to remain so. Since all application programs, in general, read data much more frequently than they cause new data to be written, the abovementioned arrangement enables very substantial advantages in computing speed to be achieved. In particular, the stratagem enables two or more commodity computers interconnected by a commodity communications network to be operated simultaneously running under the application program written to be executed on only a single computer.
Australian Patent Application No. 2005 905 582 entitled “Modified Machine Architecture with Partial Updating” lodged 10 Oct. 2005, (to which International Application No. PCT/AU2006/001447 (WO2007/041762) and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/583,958 (60/730,543) correspond)(s); Australian Patent Application No. 2005 905 581 entitled “Multiple Computer System with Enhanced Memory Clean Up” also lodged 10 Oct. 2005 (to which International Application No. PCT/AU2006/001448 (WO2007/041762) and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/583,991 (60/730,408) correspond)(s); and Australian Patent Application No. 2005 905 734 entitled ‘Multiple Machine Architecture with Overhead Reduction” lodged 17 Oct. 2005(to which International Patent Application No. PCT/AU2006/001451 (WO2007/045014) and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/583,359 (60/730,544) correspond)(s) all disclose that it is not necessary for all memory locations, objects, assets, etc in any one computer to be replicated in all the other computers. Instead a partial memory replication will suffice. The contents of all the last mentioned patent specifications are hereby incorporated into the present specification by cross reference for all purposes.
Briefly stated, the three last mentioned patent specifications disclose that memory locations, assets, objects, classes, etc. of a specific computer can be categorised into two groups, those that need to be referenced or otherwise consulted by another computer, and those that don't. The membership of the groups can be maintained up to date as the application program execution progresses by maintaining one or more tables or other such listings, the contents of which are regularly updated. The three abovementioned patent specifications are concerned mainly with reducing the amount of data which needs to be transferred between the multiple computers or machines via the communications network 53 which interconnects the computers.